More than One Way to Trellis Tomatoes

Wire Cage

There are hundreds of different ways to trellis your tomatoes, really. Most of them are easy to accomplish; often you can build a trellis out of random stuff you have laying around your house or yard. String/twine is usually involved or you can use netting like we did with the peas (and are now using for the beans). You can use metal poles, wood stakes or deconstructed furniture. Of course, you can also buy pre-made tomato trellises…we caved in and bought one of the tomato cages that are round and made of metal. We have one tomato plant that grew voluntarily in a random corner of the garden with the brussels sprouts so rather than mess around giving it something to grow on we spent the $4 and bought a cage. I would NOT want to spend $4 on the number of cages it would take to trellis ALL of our tomatoes (we have more than 20 planted, various varieties, all heirloom).

Since we like things that are cheap AND we like to use what we have (cuts down on garbage, gives new life to scrap, whatever) Josh trellised most of our plants using twine and more of the bamboo that we cut down last year. On one side of the garden the structure is A-frame and the other trellis is laid out like a grid with 8 upright poles connected by poles across the top. Twine is what holds the bamboo together and we used more twine to give the plants more room to climb. The plants are tied onto the poles with plastic oxygen hose – a friend with heart trouble collects this (UNUSED) tubing from other patients in his support group who would otherwise throw their leftover tubing into the trash. Said friend realized how wasteful that is and, being a lifelong gardener, realized that the hose would be great for tying plants. It is smooth and nonabrasive to the plants and it won’t rot or break.

We have about 8 plants that are volunteers; they just popped up from plants that grew last year. A few plants were purchased from a local farmer and the rest are plants we started from seed. The ones we started are much smaller than the other two kinds; we will get a better headstart next year once our green house is built. Our little seedlings were brought up under fluorescent lights and the only plants that seemed to really thrive were the cucumbers and the peas.